PM System

Sayian

I have built a PM system , where user's of my site can send each other private messages.
In SQL it's store as MessageID - the primary key for messages
Sender - The Account name who sent it
Reciver - The account who is receving.
Timestamp

Now .. When a user opens the message , they can see what the person said , but if it's a reply .. Like say i sent you a message , and you replied back. Id like to see what i said when i viewed your reply , you know what i mean?

Im unsure how to do this , any help would be great.

planetsim

Let me firstly try and unjumble what you just said.

What you want is a PM System, users of course can view each PM. If its a reply you would like to see the message you replied with / or sent?

If so why not change the table format. Something like this

id | msgID | title | message | time

Ok so ID is just an auto_increment field set as the Primary key. MsgID is the first reply ID so if the message sent is not a reply it would get say for example 0 or -1 signalling its just an ordinary message from then on the ID of the very first message is set as the msgID which you would then order by the time to show the order in which replies were sent etc.

Hope this helps.

Sayian

Ok , i have added messageid to my table in sql , i understand the theory behind what your explaining to me .. but am still having trouble grasping ahold if it fully. If i sent you a Message , and let's say the ID was 1

Then when you replied back to me , it would ID 2 , and would hold a value for the message ID of 1. But if i sent you a reply based on your reply , you would want to see what you said , and then it would show what i said .. wow im already confused.

A little more explanation would help .. sorry , still new to php.

planetsim

Well the theory behind it is basically the msgid is basically the ID of the message you have replied to.

So lets give this an example

You wrote me a message with ID: 5 the msgid would be either 0 or -1 to signify that its just an ordinary message.

Now then I Reply to that message so I send the message with an ID: 6 and MSGID: 5.

From that you may want to reply with ID: 7 and MSGID: 6 and so on and so on.

The original Idea if you wanted all the messages displayed would be to use msgid has the grouping field of the actual original ID then from there order by the time ascending, however with this process its more or less grouping so you will see all previous messages instead of just the previous one.

An example of this method is this

You send a message with ID: 5 msgid: 0 | -1, I then reply to that with ID: 6 msgid: 5 you reply to that message with ID: 7 msgid: 5 as you can see both replies are grouped by the original ID of 5. And from here its ordered by the time.

harmor

That may work if only two people PM'ed eachother

But lets say we have three people.

The first person sends the second person
The ID-9 and MSGID-8

Now before the second person can reply to the first person the third person PM's the first guy.

Now let's say that the second person views his PM's..
Wouldn't he be viewing the thirds person's reply instead of the first person's message?

Sorry if you don't understand

planetsim

I think you have missed the point harmor. PM Systems work with 2 users the only time a third user would be involved if there was a forward or if the PM System allowed multiple sendings on the PM. In which case both methods I suggested would work.

Well if the third Person is only PMing the other guy a new ID would be initiated and the msgid would be either 0 or -1 so it wouldnt interfere with the other groupings of messages.

Sayian

Let me get this right ...

So "MessageID" would be the previous "ID" for the message sent?

How would i structure a query like this?

And when would the query need to happen? Upon message insert?